W-I-P: Storm Over the Pacifc

oak takes a bit to dry out :) perhaps next season or later in winter.

quick update :

i've been silent which usually means i've been busy too :D took a slight break from adding in unit gfx to try and tackle the improvements and wonders. got all air units added in for US and now Japan. so they're all done save for sea units which are percolating as you read this :coffee: obviously, the sea units will form a great deal of the gameplay for this project. so fleshing all that out is going to take some time. of course :D Klyden is working on all that atm as i'm trying to plow through with most of the other stuff.

other notes :

game tested all units into the editor so far. most look pretty good in game. i hope to post some of the unit testing screen shots in due time.

3 'regions' on the map for improvements and wonders. think AoI where there were 2, Industry and Colonialism. for SoP, there will be Industry, Colonialism/Imperialism, and Pacific Islands. Industry region consists of US and Japan only. all else is asia and australia/nz will be Imperialism. obviously, Pac Islands are just that. Industry areas will have highest capacity for production, Imperialism next, and then lagging far behind, Pacific Islands which will never be able to become a size2 city.

japanese aircraft are going to have their hands full with allied air power. at the very beginning though, they will have a bit of an advantage, especially in quantity (and some quality as well, ie vet and elite pilots). however, once the experienced aircrews and aircraft are destroyed, they will have an uphill battle. not completely un-winnable mind you, just really hard to compete unless the numerical superiority is there.

when calculating aircraft range, i divided combat ranges by 75 (ie 75 miles per square, across, roughly).

moved the US capital from Pearl to Brisbane in Australia. so the US position will have to ship spawned goods (aka in AoI as raw materials) from continental US across pacific. still not fully sure on spawn rates for US. leaning towards having 5 core areas of the map (SF, Chi, NO, Atl, StL) produce these flag units. still not fully sure yet. but this will probably be how i start beta testing, with the 5 big cities cranking them out. japan will have to use the strat resource buildings, for oil, coal, iron, aluminum, and maybe rubber (not a strat resource). likely spawn rate : once every 13 turns (just like AoI). this would put the overall spawn rate at one per quarter (calendar year, 3 months = a quarter). going to have to try and find approximate VP total needed for a 'win'.

we hope to limit the building of vet units, similar to what we do for most of our projects.

most of the building gfx will be from AoI, some from my stalled Vietnam project, and ones i may actually make just for this one. i've gotten a little better and crafting the building images :cool:
 
I have been working on fleshing out my stat charts and I think I am fairly close. I have sent a list of Japanese light cruisers to El Justo and then had to revise them and still need to get them to El Justo, but there are only minor changes. One of the big headaches to figure out is the torpedo situation. This played a far bigger role in WW2 than in AoI, especially in the Pacific. Many Japanese ships also carried reloads, so that has to be factored in as well. One thing I did learn was that the Japanese were actually scared of their own torpedoes when they were under air attack. It seems the long lance had a lot lower tolerance for damage/fire around it before exploding. This is why the tubes were generally mounted very high on Japanese ships and that Japanese skippers would often eject their weapons when under air attack to avoid the resulting explosion.

For the US subs, I think we have something worked out to deal with the duds that plauged the sub force for much of the first part of the war. As many know from playing earlier games like AoI and TCW, we don't usually have a "clean" upgrade path where ships show up in port and magically upgrade to the latest and greatest. That will be even more obvious in this game as ship upgrades will be very rare. One of the ones that will take place will be the US subs. There will be an "upgrade" to a sub when the better torpedo becomes available. The sub will "refit" and its bombard/rof number will get a boost.

One other thing that will likely happen is there will be a big discrepency in the amount of subs in game compared to the historical campaign. In Civ-3, there is no real logistics model and historically, only 1/3 of a sub force is on patrol at a time with 1/3 in transit and 1/3 in refit. In Civ-3, it is possible to have 100% of the subs "on patrol". Subs in Civ-3 typically come out, go kill stuff and keep killing stuff until they die or are damaged and go to a forward base someplace to "heal". Subs will have a big enough impact in the game as it is; no need to go crazy overboard with them.

Hopefully I can get some preliminary stats posted at some point to give everyone a look see.
 

USS Arizona wreckage


Volunteers at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, December 1941


B-17s flying over Hawaiian airspace, December 1941


Soldier in gas mask, Hawaii, Early 1942


American soldiers digging a trench, Hawaii, December 1941


American soldier writes on chalk board on board unnamed DD at Pearl, December 1941
 
Klyden said:
I have been working on fleshing out my stat charts and I think I am fairly close. I have sent a list of Japanese light cruisers to El Justo and then had to revise them and still need to get them to El Justo, but there are only minor changes. One of the big headaches to figure out is the torpedo situation. This played a far bigger role in WW2 than in AoI, especially in the Pacific. Many Japanese ships also carried reloads, so that has to be factored in as well. One thing I did learn was that the Japanese were actually scared of their own torpedoes when they were under air attack. It seems the long lance had a lot lower tolerance for damage/fire around it before exploding. This is why the tubes were generally mounted very high on Japanese ships and that Japanese skippers would often eject their weapons when under air attack to avoid the resulting explosion.

For the US subs, I think we have something worked out to deal with the duds that plauged the sub force for much of the first part of the war. As many know from playing earlier games like AoI and TCW, we don't usually have a "clean" upgrade path where ships show up in port and magically upgrade to the latest and greatest. That will be even more obvious in this game as ship upgrades will be very rare. One of the ones that will take place will be the US subs. There will be an "upgrade" to a sub when the better torpedo becomes available. The sub will "refit" and its bombard/rof number will get a boost.

One other thing that will likely happen is there will be a big discrepency in the amount of subs in game compared to the historical campaign. In Civ-3, there is no real logistics model and historically, only 1/3 of a sub force is on patrol at a time with 1/3 in transit and 1/3 in refit. In Civ-3, it is possible to have 100% of the subs "on patrol". Subs in Civ-3 typically come out, go kill stuff and keep killing stuff until they die or are damaged and go to a forward base someplace to "heal". Subs will have a big enough impact in the game as it is; no need to go crazy overboard with them.

Hopefully I can get some preliminary stats posted at some point to give everyone a look see.
Click to expand...



KLYDEN,

I find your posting interesting as I've been building what I regard as a much better version of the WWII in the Pacific scenario for myself over the last month.

I began however by building a larger map (310 x 250 Hex squares) using an Atlas as a guide, as this gives 2 Hex squares for each degree of the real world, and allows my map to stretch from San Diego California (Major US Naval Base), in the East to Calcutta Commonwealth HQ in India in the West. It allows more of the islands to be included more precisely, and increases the size of the mainland of South East Asia allowing larger land battles. I've added about 280 relevant new units to my mod' including a lot of naval vessels obviously.

However your mention of the situation regarding torpedoes leads me to think you're well versed in the reality of that campaign. I will therefore add that in addition to what you mentioned it must be noted that the Japanese Torpedoes in addition to their ships carrying reloads, also had another major factor in their favour and that was range. Which was up to about 25 miles, or a similar distance to a 16inch naval gun range. This meant Jap torpedoes had about 5 times the range of everyone elses. I wanted as a result to give my Jap subs a firing range of 2 Hex squares, as the only simple solution to replicate this advantage but the Editor doesn't allow for this !

I have found from playing Civ3 for about ten years, (I have Civ 4 but I don't like it), that I can influence the AI in a number of ways by totally changing ALL the original Default settings with regard to Attack/Defence/Bombard and other settings. For example the countries involved in the Pacific war were not bankrupt or near bankrupt at the beginning, so I give everyone 999,999 monetary units to start with. I also use the cost of units as a way to influence the AI on what it selects to build. For example the Japanese did not build any new Battleships once war had started, so I made the cost of a Battleship to Japan 5 times more expensive than to the US. And as Battleships also took a long time to construct (over 18 months) I don't make them cheap even to the US, so even if the AI selects to build a US Battleship it will take around 20 turns to build it. (1 turn = 1 week in my scenario). I've also removed all the Wonders from the game as these seem to distract the AI and are not relevant in the Pacific War Scenario in my opinion.

The next step is to adjust all the resources on the map to reflect their real life locations, which as in real life will dramatically affect Japan. Japan has very few natural resources, in particular a total lack of oil. It therefore invaded the Philippinnes to obtain their supplies, as well as Chinese oil fields. Without these their Navy was basically confined to harbour by wars end.....

The Duke 71000
More PS per pound weight than any other steam loco !
 
El Justo said:

USS Arizona wreckage


Volunteers at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, December 1941


B-17s flying over Hawaiian airspace, December 1941


Soldier in gas mask, Hawaii, Early 1942


American soldiers digging a trench, Hawaii, December 1941


American soldier writes on chalk board on board unnamed DD at Pearl, December 1941
Click to expand...



Intriguing photos. I get the impression from the trench digging, that the US was expecting an Invasion of Hawai by the Japanese Army. Despite the fact that the War in Europe had been raging already for 2 years, and the expected trench warfare of WWI had not reoccured thanks to fast moving tanks !

I visited the USS Arizona memorial site in Pearl Harbour some years ago, very moving, and a stark reminder of what happened.

Although to be fair, the Japanese actually messed up big time, by not taking out the oil supplies, due to they're not decyphering their own reconnaisence photos properly. That would have set things back for the US by probably another 6 months, to rebuild and resupply the large amount of oil needed to keep a fleet going. One Battleship alone taking about 1,500tons of oilevery time it filled up !

There are still some rather odd questions unanswered, surrounding the attack on Pearl Harbour. One being the real reason why all the US Aircraft Carriers had put to sea a few days before the attack with only a handful of escorts. Although Carriers were not viewed as that important in Naval circles at that moment in time, and Battleships were thought to be able to see off any puny air attacks, the question still remains, as to the most fortuitous non presence of the critical Carriers. The attack of course changed US naval tactics. However there were one or two senior US Navy Admirals who like the Japanese had taken an interest in the British attack on the Italian Navy in an Italian port about a year earlier where a mere 12 Torpedo carrying Swordfish Biplanes had wrecked havoc with the Italian navy and put one Battleship out of the war, and another severely damaged amongst other vessels. The Japanese used this as the basis for their attack on Pearl Harbour. (Both the US & Japan were of course Neutral observers at that time) !!!

The Duke 71000
More PS per pound weight than any other steam loco !
 
El Justo said:
lest we not forget !!
Click to expand...
"not"?

Anyway, I think many fo the US Navy and Army officers should've been brought to trial for sheer clumsiness/incompetence, such an attack was highly predictable.
 
The attack itself was very predictable, but among the Admirals and Generals, they did not think such an attack would take place against Hawaii to open a war. The "smart" money was on such an attack against the PI and other overseas areas. They also felt any such task force coming for Hawaii would be detected in advance or that they would get better warning through intelligence services. (The signs through the intelligence were there, but ignored when it came to Hawaii or misinterpreted to believe the first attacks would be against more distant areas).
 
the americans had a choice - to give their old ships to the british, and doing so to loosen the grip over england- or to get their ships somehow destroyed - and so england begging for help...!
 
Klyden

A good reason for the Japanese dumping torpedoes when under air attack is that they used oxygen instead of regular air. This made them highly flammable when topped up, the major reason the British dropped oxygen torpedo design at the end of the 20's.

A way around the ship spam might be to have a unit represent several ships for the smaller types. The USN had several hundred destroyers and other escort types operating in the Pacific towards the end of the war.

The duke 71000

The use of oxygen torpedoes in subs by the Japanese didn't effect the range potential as much as you would think. A sub periscope doesn't give enough height to get much info beyond what would be a normal torpedo range, so the effective range they could be used at was not much greater than standard torpedoes. Where the oxygen torpedo really shined was it was faster and left no visible wake. The speed means less time to target, so more chance of a hit before the target changes course and no wake means they wont see it coming to take evasive measures. Speed and wakelessness also made the surface ship version of the oxygen torpedoes the deadly foes they were as much as their great range. While Long Lances had a range of 40k yds., firing a torpedo at that range is impracticable. It would take so long to get to the target, any minor speed or course change, or error in torpedo settings would cause a miss. But at the ranges similar to the max range of Allied torpedoes, 10-15k yds., Long Lances were much faster, so arrived long before Allied captains expected any torpedo could. Allied navies didn't fire their torpedoes at those long ranges because the torpedo was too slow to get there in good time and would be bound to miss, so they never expected Japanese ships to fire torpedoes at such long range. The lack of a wake meant the torpedo was not even seen, so often the Allies thought the ship struck a drifting mine rather than got hit by a torpedo.
 
interesting remarks. thanks for sharing.

i've been quiet here in this thread. but i've managed to chip away. got all air units for japan and US into folders, text docs, editor. have a pre-lim list for commonwealth civs air units. have not gotten them into folders yet but should not take long as their list is much shorter than the US and Japanese lists. once commonwealth civs are done (ie British India, Australia, NZ), i'll pinpoint chinese republic air units. after that, it will be sea unit adds into folders, text, editor. this last part is a ways off though as Kly continues to move through the stuff.

i also managed to get all Industry buildings and Imperialism buildings into the folders, text, editor, and buildings large and small sheets. it's something like 60 buildings (c. 40 industry, 20 imperialism). next up for the buildings is the Pacific Islands buildings. iirc, there's 10 of them. after that, add in wonders, small wonders. after that, pre-place buildings on the map. a ways off though, probably after all unit additions are in and even tech tree completion.

so, in a nutshell, here's what i have to do before beta :

finish the air units, could probably get this done in one or two 'sittings'

finalize sea unit list. comprehensive and will take a while longer

add in rest of buildings, add wonders etc

construct tech tree. can probably be designed in a sitting or two. getting coordinates into editor though will be tedious

once all the above is complete, i can alpha/beta test it. really looking forward to trials on this one :)
 
The current plan is the light cruisers will be the smallest single ship in the game. Destroyers and escorts will be grouped together along with subs. The US will probably not have escorts in the game simply because they won't need them and this would be an effort to try to keep the overall number of units down a bit. (Escorts may be incorporated with some sort of transport unit, but that is a work in progress).

I will also likely represent the US CVE's as a group of ships to help cut down on numbers again. (over 100 saw service, but not all in the Pacific; regardless trying to represent/move around 50-60 escort carriers for the US player is not something I would enjoy doing and while a SoD of 50 something CVE's wrecking havoc across the Pacific may appeal to some for a short period of time, long term, I don't think it is the way to go). The US version would probably 3-4 while the Japanese might be represented either individually or in pairs.
 
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